1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to marble tile trim and a method of making same in the field of marble tile laying or setting.
Marble tile and similarly cut natural stone are difficult to work with because they have natural graining which is the result of discontinuities in the basic structure of the stone. It is the surface appearance of these discontinuities that gives marble and other stones their characteristic appealing appearance. Yet, these discontinuities are the very point at which fracture of the tile often occurs. The tiles are highly desirable for use in bathrooms, lavatories, and commercial building entryways because of their appearance.
The standard tile is a piece that is about 12".times.12".times.3/8" thick which has been cut from a slab by a stone saw. The colors of a batch of tiles tend to be similar because they have been cut from the same stone or from a stone adjacent in the quarry. Thus, the tile setter attempts to have all tiled areas covered by tiles coming from a similarly colored batch of tiles.
Prior to setting tiles for a desired surface effect, a substrait is laid which, in these modern times, is usually a concrete prefabricated board having a thickness of about one-half inch. These concrete boards are placed forming the corners, both outside and inside, in all of the areas where the tile is desired. The tile setter then comes and places the marble tiles on the board using a permanent type of mortar or bonding agent to form a continuous planar wall. To join continuous planar walls, the tile setter requires some type of transition piece which is called "trim." There is the requirement to terminate a planar wall at some position which is short of the end of the wall upon which the tile is placed and at that position, some means is required to dress off the end of the set tile.
In all of these instances, it is desirable to make a gently rounded transition to the adjacent wall. The transition should be in colors and appearance that blends with the wall. Thus, some form of marble would be desired.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Heretofore tile setters have specially ground slabs of marble, which are thicker than the standard tile, with a gently rounded surface so as to form a gentle transition from one wall to the other, but these thicker slabs suffer the disadvantage that they easily break at the discontinuities. As the slabs come from a different piece of stone than that of the tile, they often are not of a pleasingly matching color.
Because of the disadvantage of the specially ground thick slab trim pieces described above tile setters have resorted to less pleasing expediencies of rounding off the edge of the last course of tile or leaving it sharp. They made a sharp joint at the corners by abutting adjacent tiles. These sharp corners are subject to chipping and are not pleasing to the eye.
Although marble tile setting has been known for many centuries, there has been no satisfactory solution to the problems described.